Chapter 12: The Hunt Moon Gate

Maddock's fist closed over the button.

"No," he said.

It was a small word, and it rang in the stone corridor.

Josiah's smile did not move.

"Son, you're upset. The girl's been filling your head."

"It's a button, Father." Maddock's voice shook, but it held. "You taught me that nothing is lucky."

For a long moment the two men looked at each other down the length of the cellar.

Behind Josiah, boots clattered on the stairs.

The Beta came down with four wolves in grey jackets, and the white-braided elder came behind them, leaning on her stick.

Josiah saw them, and I watched him choose.

"Of course," he said gently. "Keep it, if it comforts you. We'll speak after the Moot."

He turned and climbed the stairs without hurrying, and the Beta went with him without looking at me.

The elder stayed.

"I saw his eyelids," she said, to nobody in particular. "Sixty years I've watched men pretend to be asleep."

Then she went after them, and the iron door of the cell stayed locked, because the law is the law.

Six days later I was still in that cell, and on the seventh the Hunt Moon rose.

At dusk the elder came back with the key.

"By law, an accused wolf stands at the Stone on the Hunt Moon," she said briskly. "Come, Healer. You'll want to wash."

"What happened?" I asked, scrubbing my cheeks at the basin.

"Your friend's three hundred wolves stood on the ridge for six days and did nothing at all."

She sniffed.

"Not one snarl. Do you know how frightening that is? Josiah has not slept."

I walked up to the Stone with the elder on one side and Maddock on the other.

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